


The Orchid Horror and the 8r8k Spider.

by orphan_account



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blackrom, F/F, Impregnation, Monster Girls, Tentacles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-01
Updated: 2012-12-01
Packaged: 2017-11-20 01:08:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,923
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/579638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The tainted corpse of Rose Lalonde is violently plunged back into the service of the timeless things of the Furthest Ring. She must not do it alone, however. They saw fit to provide her with a partner.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Garden for a single Necrose

Take the sound of a thirteen year old girl screaming in terror and regret as everyone she loves is murdered one by one before her eyes and her life is cut short by a sword penetrating her chest cavity and severing her spine.

Take the sound of an ageless alien entity of unfathomable power bellowing with rage as it is forced to comprehend the concepts of loss and mortality for the first time, like so many of its brethren before it.

Mix these sounds together, replace moments of one with moments from the other, play some sections backwards, some forwards, some inverse, take the resulting cacophony and amplify it through a blender of the duskiest majyyiks.

That is the sort of sound that issued forth from the cold, black lips of Rose Lalonde as she was dragged kicking and screaming from the maw of the abyss. Netherpitch energies crackled and lashed around where she lay, and her screaming body rose as though pulled by a string attached to the bloody wound in her torso. Her heavy eyelids were flung open, her hands clenched into fists, and rigor mortis was torn apart at the seams by the merciless, gnashing teeth of elan vital.

Rose's first act of consciousness was to politely stop screaming.

The eldritch maelstrom collapsed into itself. Rose dropped daintily to her feet then unceremoniously to her knees. She gave a hacking, cat-like cough and vomited a tar-like sludge of bile, congealed blood, and the fish-paste sandwiches that had been the last thing she'd eaten before contacting John on his birthday. Her mouth and eyes prickled all over from irritation and abuse, her arms trembled, and she struggled not to fall face first in her own sulfur-smelling regurgitate.

When her stomach finally stopped heaving against her battered ribcage, Rose allowed herself to fall back onto her rump. The stone floor was cold and hard, and uncomfortable against her tail bone. She wiped her mouth with as much dignity as she could muster, and flicked her wrist clean of it.

After weighing up her situation, Rose's second act of consciousness was to allow herself a single, vocalized sob.

Her third act was to wonder why she didn't count sitting down as a conscious act, and her fourth act was to stop pointlessly counting each little thing she chose to do.

She was still on the battlement where she last remembered being, and beyond the stink of her expulsion the lingering scent of tainted rain was still present in the air. Rose concluded that she had been dead no more than twenty four hours, but further analysis was interrupted by a strange, colorful flickering intruding upon the edge of her vision.

The sky above the battlefield tossed and heaved with a brilliant green and gold aurora that completely blanketed the heavens from horizon to horizon, with not a patch of blue in sight no matter hard she scoured. The light flitted, danced, roiled and tossed about like only the most legendary of Vegas benders, and gave the entire battlefield an eerie green glow that could only be noticed if you looked for it. 

Rose stood up with a strained sigh, and her chest started to ache.  
She froze, scared to move in case something was still damaged.  
She mentally explored the sensations of her body- the chilly touch of the air, the twinge of its scent, the hard stone beneath her feet, and a tingle, a strange, bizarre carpet of pinprick sensations that tickled her skin from the inside, and stillness- perfect stillness that she realized was not humanly possible. There was no tremble in her hands, her eyes did not blink, and her mouth did not breath. Her chest was completely still, and she felt no worse because of it. Calmly, she counted the seconds in her head.  
She broke five minutes and stopped. Her head felt no lighter than when she began, and she had never been disposed towards such feats in the past.

Rose manually breathed in, and the ache returned.

v'ie fn'ca oghn vthr'cz naeb

Her throat felt sore, and her voice reached her ears as the unmistakable broodfester tongues. Rose scowled, and took another breath. She concentrated, tried to recall the motion and feeling in her vocal cords when she spoke English.

I'a, Ey, Yia, ay eye Iiiiiiiiii

She gritted her teeth, an unnatural snarl issued from her throat.

Wo-wo-wo-wo-wo-wo-wwill...nacht nvet nietsche nort not! Lyu liai lvndkt loose lrc lose lose. Aeghtcyleeistch. Pschooooo Pshaw Tsooo. Eeeeezc ily.

Rose forced her body to pant, and spat out a curse that if properly pronounced would sever the cerebral hemispheres of any living thing that heard it.

Now was hardly the time to wrestle with her own usurped linguistic faculties, and she mentally condemned her inattentiveness. The last thing she recalled was seeing John slain by the demon, then falling herself despite fighting with her all.

She had been killed. Logically, it stood to reason that she was now dead. Examining her body revealed a hole in her black dress where Jack's sword had penetrated her for the lethal strike. She pulled the cloth apart, and brushed her fingers against the gray skin beneath.

When she saw it, the first thing she identified was a scar. The flesh was darker, and with pale, raised ridges like a second degree burn.

When she touched it, her whole body almost collapsed. She concluded it was erogenous. Her near-still heart seized up, and a surge of blood rushed through her body. Rose gasped, and realized the gasp was unintentional. A terrible itch bloomed between her legs, and Rose wondered what would happen if she touched the scar again.

She snatched her fingers away, and after a few seconds her breathing slowed to a stop, and the feeling of flowing blood subsided.

It seemed, to Rose, that while the rest of her body was by whatever definition 'dead', this one patch of flesh about her middle was 'alive'. She could experiment with her body until multiple orgasms fried her brain completely- Rose held that thought for a few seconds- but there was no sign of Jack, no sign of John, and an alien (-er) sky overhead. She needed answers. Rose drew her needles.

Rose did not draw her needles. What Rose drew instead was an error message reporting that her strife specibus was missing. Rose buried her face in her palm and let herself wallow in frustration a few seconds, before checking the contents of her sylladex. Her hubtop band was also missing, but everything else she had on her before was still there.

No computer with which to communicate and now tool with which to direct eldritch energies. Parables about creeks and paddles came to mind, but Rose swiftly dismissed them to think of an actual solution.

The words of that cheatless shark Scratch came to mind-

What makes you convinced the wands are responsible for your abilities?

Between all his riddles and implications, he rarely gave a straight answer. He never said her mastery of majyyiks was unrelated to her wands, only Socratic ironies and hypothetical parables that where never laid out as truth or fiction. Nonetheless…

Rose closed her eyes, and pretended she still held her thorns. She pressed her thumb and two fingers together and flicked her wrist while thinking the thoughts of intent as she'd done many times before.

Rose Lalonde lifted off the ground and gently hovered in place. It felt exactly the same as all the other times she'd flown. Her feet dangled idly towards the ground, and her skin tingled at the supernatural forces that held her aloft.

Gods above and below, she hated that man. Never before had she encountered an intelligence that made her feel she was too clever to outsmart it. If fates were merciful, she never would again. If fates were unmerciful, she'd stab them in the neck until they complied.

Rose brushed aside her hair with an ashen hand as she pondered her next move. Deep in thought, she listlessly drifted away from the castle, if nothing else then at least to get away from the smell of her own purging.

She was alive, at least through certain tenuous definitions of the word, and all things considered it was likely thanks to her patrons in the furthest ring. It was surprising they hadn't already contacted her, the very least she could do was drop them a line.

_Rose Lalonde calling Oglogoth, Deep One and Teeth Grinder. Come in Oglogoth._

Her head remained quiet. Perhaps something had happened to her dreamself, and whatever it was left her unable to commune with dark gods. Perhaps whatever it was that painted the sky was preventing communion.

If it was the Scratch, then there was no telling how little time she had to escape it. Rose frowned, and looked to the violent green and gold celestial ceiling. There was no room left in the Lalonde budget for fuckups, and there was no time to waste on experimental probing. She needed answers.

Fortunately, she had a pocket full of them.

Rose retrieved the Magic Cue Ball from her sylladex. The perfectly white perfect sphere felt heavy in her palm. She calmed herself, and after a few unsuccessful attempts, asked it in plain English.

She had no doubt the omniscient device could answer no matter what language she spoke, but it was the principle of the matter.

Of all the actions I am currently considering, what would I, in hindsight, consider the biggest mistake?

She gazed into the orb with her seer's eyes.

Attempting to fly beyond the battlefield

Poor news, so she was trapped on the battlefield and could go no further.

Or was she? Lies of omission, after all, do not exist.

Would I likewise consider traveling via an existing portal to be a mistake?

No.

Score one for the dead girl.

 

  
The portal deposited Rose beside the small dock attached to her house. The wineglass remained where she'd left it, oddly undisturbed by imps and ogres alike. The endless ocean of cyan, magenta and yellow stretched out in all directions, completely still in the absence of marine life. Rose gazed at the motionless waters for several minutes, before turning down the tunnel back to her displaced house.

After a short walk through damp, darkened caverns Rose was once again at her front door. She did not think about ownership as her cold hands wrapped around the handle, and she did not think of inheritance as she stepped inside. Such thoughts were calmly placed inside a small pink box in her head not to be opened until peace time.

Accompanied by the echoes of her footsteps down ever empty halls Rose made her way back to her room and collapsed onto her bed. A faint wind tickled the hair on her brow through the hole let by John's visit, and carried with it the sweet scent of the ocean. The bed's cool quilt felt good against her skin, but her idleness made her nerves itch. There were so many things she wanted to ask of the cueball, but so many of those things felt like idleness themself. If only there was some way to streamline her inquiries.

Her blinkless gaze fell upon the replacement totem lathe Dave left in her room.

Cueball, cueball, whitest of all, what is the code for the resulting alchemical combination of Magic Cue Ball logical and Crystal Ball logical or Hubtopband?

N2FNXNF1

A lot of grist and a bit of running around later, Rose put on LAPLACE’S DEMONOCLE, a perfectly white eyepiece able to not only determine the precise location and momentum of every atom in the universe, but also show you that atom and answer any questions about its past and future, and what can be done with an atom can be done with anything on the macro scale.  
-That which is Below corresponds to that which is Above, and that which is Above corresponds to that which is Below, to accomplish the miracle of the One Thing.-

Rose flew across the chromatic waters of LOLAR, visions and words directly transmitted to her mind through her optical nerves thanks to her new eyepiece.

She was Rose Lalonde. She was not THE Rose Lalonde, but she was A Rose Lalonde. Her dreamself had gone on to become the Godseer of Light, and was traveling on a meteor through paradox space in a round trip to avoid the Scratch. Meanwhile, Jade had ascended as the Godwitch of Space, and was transporting several planets to the post-scratch universe herself.

The suicide mission had failed to succeed and succeeded in its failure. The four heroes would meet four other heroes and fix everything in a scenario that grated with Rose's paranoid cynicism. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, so quoted Robert Heinlein.

Her answer generator churned out more specifics to unknown variables, and as the rational nagging at the back of her mind subsided one by one Rose became more aware of an increasingly more apparent irrational compulsion.

There was a place Rose had an urge to be.

That was not completely true. A better phrasing would be, there was a direction Rose had an urge to go, for a certain distance at a certain altitude. What awaited her there, she had little clue. Rose had been just about to ask her demonocle when she stopped herself. There were certain questions that she was nigh incapable of finding the answers to herself, and it was good that she had devices to find those answers for her, but if she resorted to those questionable vanilla devices for every enigma then she would risk forgetting her own basic problem solving skills in the comfort of such a crutch, never mind the worse consequences of asking stupid questions in a universe that condoned ontological paradoxes of information.

Rose took a deep breath of briny, fragrant air, and cracked the stiffness in her neck. No matter the answer, she would sooner or later seek the location in person. Dilly dallying just wasted seconds. Her understanding of the status quo was that she had a little under three years before urgency became a thing that was happening again, but fools had gotten their friends killed for less.

Rose rocketed across the rainbow waters of LOLAR, paying slight attention to how her gray reflection looked in the prismatic waters of her land. Salt spray assailed he nose, and she found it peculiarly easy to resist the urge to sneeze. What was as was no longer reflex for her seemed strangely arbitrary, but Rose had no doubt there was an underlying obviousness behind it that she had yet to grasp.


	2. Tomb of Eight.

Colorful water lapped at the edge of the island before Rose. The mass was only a few hundred meters tall, and with an oddly smooth surface, giving the impression of a polished mountain jutting up from the deep. The beacon inside her mind pointed somewhere below the white protrusion, however a quick look around revealed no obvious entrance. A cursory examination below the water’s surface only left Rose with wet clothes clinging to her skin, shoe deprived, and with a slight rise in frustration.

She pondered the merit of asking her demonocle for a minute, but an errant memory of a phrase forced her to reconsider. She brushed her wet fringe out of her eyes and stared at the tiny white island.

A Seer sees with her eyes

The questionably natural structure faded before her supernal gaze- there were no entrances anywhere in the mountain, or below it. The whole chunk of rock was completely solid, and free of entrenched passageways or cave systems.

Of interesting note was that underneath the island, just below the sea floor, was a structure with a much more obviously constructed design. Passageways, rooms and symmetrically arranged chambers did not occur naturally. The mountain above was peculiar enough to be noticed, but explicable enough to be dismissed, and in otherwise normal circumstances Rose might well have concluded it was a red herring in the game. Meanwhile, this octagonal complex under it betrayed the hand of an intelligent designer, a place that holds secrets.

Clearly, the island ruse was a distaction.

Rose lowered herself to the water, and touched her toe against the cool, pastel colored waters. She erected a platform of force beneath her feet, and braced herself upon the water’s surface. She placed both her palms against the smooth, chalk object and gathered up two greedy handfuls of blasphemous power.

Mellon

Orchid lashes of thunderous energy exploded from her outstretched hands. Ethereal thorns the color of desert flower gouged into the island and violently thrashed about inside it. The woegothic majyyiks bellowed with the malice of phi times i to the power of pi tormented souls trapped in sleepless dreams, the chalk island was torn asunder at the chemical level, and the sky was gashed open by the escaping violence. The scarf binding Rose's waist billowed in the in the buffeted air that howled in protest at the bloodeldritch evocations that quaked the land. The silver chain of Rose's white demonocle jingled daintily next to her ear.

If a Lalonde breaks something to achieve their goals, and no one is around to see it, it is still a lesson in showmanship.

 

All that was left of the island was a crater, lipped just high enough to keep the water from flooding it, and going all the way down to the entrance of the hidden structure.

The little black furnace of passion that drove Rose Lalonde tickled with delight, and she could have sworn the broodfestering cloak of unspeakable powers she'd wrapped around herself was audibly giggling. It might have been rather disconcerting if whimsical destructions wasn't ever such good fun.

The entrance itself was hardly impressive, an octagonal hole hewn from stone and jutting out a bit like the pursed lips of some stone aged simulacrum with a laughably abysmal polygon count. The hole was blocked by an colossal truncated cuboctahedron carved from black marble.

Rose contemplated wreathing her foot in angry shadows and kicking the geometric oddity with enough force to collapse it into kitty litter. After a moments consideration, it vanished into her sylladex. After wreaking havoc upon an entire island, breaking a rock just wouldn't be as satisfying.

 

The smell of the ocean followed Rose down the stone entryway, and mingled with the stale air to make a sickly approximation of soured potpourri, an odd mix of fermented blueberry, dead lilacs, and salted grass. Rose decided to stop breathing again. It was a little surreal to be making that decision, like she was abusing privileges she wasn't meant to have. Well, if being a reanimated corpse wasn't meant to be luxurious, it shouldn't have come with so many perks.

The narrow entrance tunnel opened out into a wider hall. Stone statues of melancholic turtles stood parallel down its length, hunched over and with various books and urns clutched to their beards. The mystery of tetsudine facial hair was an impenetrable, bristly enigma, but Rose felt certain there was a wizard entwined in the solution somewhere.

To her seer eyes, the temple interior was a splendid octarine, and she could clearly see the myriad of traps and obstacles hidden not only in this hall, but all the way down the entire structure. The combined efforts of Indiana Jones, Bilbo Baggins, and Sindbad the Sailor would be hard pressed to make it through unscathed and in good time.

Rose was pondering the merit of just tearing up the ground floor by floor until she reached the heart of the temple, when something else stood out to her seer vision- a perfectly innocuous doorway, down an out of the way passage hidden in shadows just to the side of the hall entrance. She approached, and the stone door receded into the ground at her presence. Inside was a broad hole, like a mineshaft, its walls glistening with exposed minerals and gems. Descending down the shaft was a thick, triple woven rope, threaded through a pulley system and counter-weighted with a large, stone octagonal bipyramid. A quick look down the shaft with supernal vision revealed it lead almost straight to the main chamber at the bottom of the structure, and was completely trap free.

_'The fast way out, and the NPC bypass for when they need to pass on some message and can't wait till you've made your own way out._

Rose stepped off the doorway's ledge and plummeted down the hole.

What did it mean for her, that she was now being afforded NPC privileges? Did it mean that she was now an extra, while the self that went god tier remained the star? Did it mean she no longer had free will, and now operated only as commanded by the game? She didn't feel any different, when it came to making choices or thinking about them. Either she sill possessed free will, or never had it in the first place.

Today sure seemed to be an existentially complex day.

Rose's bare feet made contact with the ground. The fuzzy carpet of moss felt much nicer against her weary skin. She indulged herself a few moments wriggling her toes against the cushiony floor before moving on.

The shortcut had deposited her at the end of a long, high passageway. Stone walls stretched up to the ceiling on either side of her, and their surface was covered in countless runes and glyphs. From her previous translations, Rose recognized the format as what her consorts used for epic poetry.

Her earlier expeditions about the land's temples surfaced in her memories, long hours spend cross referencing old books with older carvings, accompanied by her entourage and loyal Salamancer. She wondered if Bubbles missed her, she had been relieved to see he was doing well when she'd seen the golden ship through her demonocle during her intel gathering.

With what she had managed to pick up of Chelonia linguistics, and with the aid of her omniscient eyepiece, Rose skimmed the walls as she walked by. They spoke of a terrible evil, from beyond time, space, death and reality, that had been sealed away for the good of all, and dire warnings for anyone who blah blah blah.

A terrible evil, it seemed, remained asleep- by a certain definition of the word 'evil'. A hunch formed on the back of Rose's mind as to what her elder god patrons wanted her to do here. In future, Rose might do well to remember that a hunch tends to make one's thoughts lopsided.

 

At the end of the long hall, the passageway opened up into a huge room- octagonal in arrangement, with eight imposing statues of concerned turtles facing a great black and blue lotus with eight petals, placed upon an obsidian octagonal dais covered in thick thorns, lit up by eight beams of gold and turquoise from eight narrow shafts hewn through the ceiling all the way to the surface, light that had been blocked innumerable years by the island of chalk placed above, keeping the room entombed in darkness. When Rose stepped into the chamber, a faint tingle bloomed in her core.

Until the day the Seer's fallen shade would bless the cursed sepulcher with the kiss of light and rain again.

An unsteady trickle of water dripped down from each of the light shafts, and the radiance that was not swallowed up by the shade of the midnight lotus reflect upon the flat, pearl-like walls of the octagonal chamber. The whole room was list up by rainbows cast from reflects, and all of it pointed at the great flower in the center of the room, that could steal it's fill of light for the first time in an age.

The lotus trembled, and glowing pictographs began to appear on its surface- An m bearing a spiked tail, flashing cobalt and crimson, a sun that flickered gold and green, a tendril-faced skull that went from white to heliotrope, an upright ouroboros that shifted from black to cerulean, these symbols covered the surface of the lotus as it started to open.

Y8S

A terrible screech rung out, that spiked in pitch in the middle

F8CK Y8S

Another screech, and the lotus violently distended from the inside like it had been struck.

H8LL

F8CK8NG

Y8S

The lotus violently shook and heaved, its surface rippled with countless small impacts. The petals ripped and tore, and the entire flower burst as its occupant clawed its way out of its confines.

8H8H8H8H8H8H8H8H8H8H8

Its trill, chittering voice lashed out against the air like glass whipped with steel, and Rose beheld the terrible creature.


	3. Meeting of Tainted Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's more than one way to bring terrible things into a world.

Eight eyes glowed with what Rose recognized as the light of fortune, so bright it obscured any details such as pupils or sclera if they were even present. They sat asymmetrically on a thin, charcoal gray face- one on the creature's right and seven smaller on its left. These eyes sat above a wide, grinning mouth framed by full, blue lips and filled teeth like jagged rocks below a cliff. From either side of the creature's mouth emerged two great, tusk-like fangs that glistened with blue fluid- chelicerae was the name for them, Rose recalled. From its brow stood two curved, orange horns, the left ended in two prongs and the right ended in a spear-like barb. The horns stood like the sentinels before the jungle of matted, black hair that flowed from the creature's head down it's thin, bony neck, over prominent naked shoulders, and tickled its back. It's entire skinny torso was naked, and almost completely androgynous, with no swell of breast or presence of hips to guess its sex.  
The slightest hint of ribs against skin suggested someone in need of more than one meal a day, and the sculpted tones of stomach muscles indicated an intimacy with regular exertion.  
The skin remained that smooth, charcoal gray as its face, save for the two-steps darker nipples that adorned its chest in the typical place.  
Its right arm was long and slender, ending in a human enough hand with bony knuckles and sharp, yellow, claw-like nails that clicked when they touched. Its left arm, on the other hand, had no other hand, instead from the elbow down was a large, black, hooked pincer of glossy chitin, the sound of its energetic clacking reverberated through the opalescent chamber like the cracking of hollow plastic.  
From the waist down, where one would expect the hips and thighs to be was more interlocking plates of black chitin. This part of its body extended back behind its upright torso into a sleek thorax that abruptly cinched into a thin 'bridge' that connected it to an enormous, swollen abdomen, whose highest point was level with the creature's shoulders. Its centauride body was held up by four long, carapacian legs, with knees held higher than its head, and if fully outstretched the limbs would be longer than the body they were attached to.

Oglogoth the Deep One. A drider. Get in the rope trick.

Rose crossed her arms and tried to keep her face and voice flat. She didn't want to give away metaphorical loaded gun of majyyks ready to be unleashed.

What? What the fuck are you talking a8out?

Rose stared, transfixed at the way the creature's mouth moved as it talked. It swung it's pincer out to declare something, but when it caught sight of its own appendage its eyes widened in horror.

W8!

It looked down, and ran its hand over the spot where its stomach disappeared into its thorax.

W8 W8 W8 W8 W8 W8 W8!

It twisted its torso to try and look behind it, but its legs skittered beneath it, causing it to rotate around itself three times while it stared in horror at its own body. Its legs stabbed into the ground fast as lightning, moving in perfect coordination about one another, and the sound of chitin on stone was like the melody of a harsh rain.

Oh g8ds 8've g8 my Mom's 8ss!

Its frantic voice sounded like some unholy hissing blend of a cockney, Irish and German accent that was never meant to exist. Some distracted part of Rose wondered if it happened to be a fan of football at all.

You d8mned g8ds! 8 n8ver 8sked for th8s!

It shook its black pincer at the sky, and swung its bloated abdomen from side to side in agitation.

Was it just you in there?

Rose remained cross-armed, but her eyes tracked the creature's every movement.

8nd who are you? Some hornless troll?

It spun around and leaned down to leer Rose in the eye. Wherever the shadows that shrouded the seer brushed against it made its chitin appear a surreal bright blue. Rose breathed in, and was struck by the smell of seawater, rum and fermented blueberries that surrounded the creature.

I assure I am of the species homo sapiens, and I presume then that you are a troll? I wasn't expecting someone so, heavy set?

F8 you! Idi8, I d8n't normally look like th8s. Those no good, r8ten, 8ack sta88ing, 8lu88er mouthed, st8nk 8yed, over8ted ingr8ts. Last time I agree to 8eing some 8ilge drinker's o8l8te!

Eight...eight...ate eit eight....are you the eight troll Dave mentioned? The violent girl brainwashing John into being her minion and concubine?

The black pincer crashed down into the ground right in front of Rose, chilling her face with a breeze. She'd already Seen and made sure that statement wouldn't need her to duck. The no-longer-very-troll-like and never-much-of-a-girl troll girl hissed through clenched teeth.

8 n8ver m8ssed w8th John's h8d

All eight glowing eyes glared at the seer. The malice radiating from the warped creature sent an odd tingle down her spine.

8 adm8 I put him to sleep a c8ple of times, 8ut I never put any thoughts in his head. 8ut yeah, I'm Vriska Serket. The 8est.

The best Vriska Serket?

When it comes to 8eing the 8est Vriska Serket I'm simply the 8est there is. I'm 8etter than all the other Vriskas. Aaaaaaaall of them.

Are you actually making that claim based on your experiences with your many alternative iterations, or are you just making empty boasts that in any other context would prove you an idiot?

Don't you get all snooty miss sylla8ic 8utt with me, I get enough of th8 from Fussy-fangs.

Do you mean Kanaya? I understand she's a rainbow drinker now.

Is that why she was suddenly acting really cool and 8adass all of a sudden? I guess that explains the glowwy thingy dealy. W8, what the fuck does that have to do with anything?

Vriska stomped the ground impatiently. It sounded like high heels on a dance floor.

I was distracting you with a baited question you didn't have to think to know how to answer in order to distract you and help calm you down because while I could sit here epileptic with laughter at your atrocious accent, I've some questions I'd like to be able to understand your answers to without having to think like a backwater redneck hillbilly. By the way, I'm Rose Lalonde.

Vriska staggered back, trying to form a response. Her torso writhed in awkward struggle, and Rose's eyes were drawn to the shape of strong muscles moving below the aberration’s skin.

So let's sever the pursuit, I'm a corpse, you're a crime against nature. My mother is not loudly masturbating outside the bathroom door when I'm trying to urinate so this is not the worst day I've had. If I am not making an erroneous assumption, you have colluded some form of bargain with the unknowable things that lurk beyond. My instructions began and ended with coming to this exact location, so I infer that the next step lies in you somehow, and I do hope extracting it doesn't require a knife somehow. Now are you prepared to be forthcoming or am I gn'lyan vdit agh'ru?

Rose politely coughed into her hand. 

Pardon me, slip of the broodfester tongue.

For f8cks s8kes, Spooky. I'm h8ving a body crisis here, you could at l8st give me a 8reather 8efore interrog8ing me.

When she ground her teeth together, Rose noticed the way her chelicerae clacked against one another, It made the sides of Vriska's mouth bulge in interesting ways.

So I'm a hurr durr dum8 8itch and think Terezi's just flying her protein chute to wh8ever tune she thinks will keep me from doing something that 8ctually helps for once in my life. In hinds8, I think that a8out every 8th thing I decide to do anyway so it really is no surprise she wasn't 8luffing after all. A quick 8lindstick to the 8ack and I'm dream8ait like any other chump. I wanna call 8ullsh8 on tha8, 8ecause I pro8a8ly would have actually listened once I revived, 8ut I guess stupid Skaia doesn't care a8out doing things case 8y case, just crunches everything you ever done and spits out a hero, villain, or 8sk again later.

Can you see how much that f8cking sucks? 8ther it punishes you for things you haven’t done yet and n8ver will do, or a random dum8 rock to the 8ack of the head will still kill you forever 8ecause you've done too many heroic deeds in your life. H8w the f8ck 8s 8ny 8f th8t j8st?

She spat blue venom from her fangs as her agitation grew, and her eight armored legs stomped the ground like she was trying to stab the stone floor.

Vriska, you are getting hysterical and it's not helping. I think you're missing an important point in your moral dissertation, four points, in fact, but that can wait until later because it really doesn't matter how or why you died. That you did die is an unchangeable fact, what is important is everything after that nuanced occurrence.

You've the 8edside manner of a c8ctus, Thorn8ush. Aren't you supposed to be a head d8ctor?

Tentacle therapist, I violate the places you don't want to go, and if you're asking me to penetrate that cobwebbed mess you use for a brain forget it. You couldn't afford me.

Despite her newfound girth, Vriska could still move as fast as any god-thief. Her pincer moved in a flicker, and its curved, serrated edges pressed against either side of Rose's neck.

8ig words for a corpse puppet running on a leaky 8attery. Fighting words. I'd like to 8e your friend, 8ut only 8ecause you'd make things easier. Don't think for a second I actually need you.

'Friend', a loaded word. In the troll language, the word for 'friend' was exactly the same as the word for 'enemy'. Dave had laughed at that and called it stupid. He'd assumed things like trolls being incapable of knowing someone without wanting to murder them, and other things that presumed synonymous connotations across languages. Rose had noticed the nuance behind it. What did a friend and an enemy have in common? You hadn't killed them yet.

Remove the arm, Serket, or I will rip it off with my cold, dead hands and give you a cranial piercing. Now get on with it.

Vriska withdrew, and tossed her hair back with a huff like there really was no big deal about death threats.

I died, saw what the dead lands were like. Met John. 'A' John. I just walked right up to him so I didn't realize how hard it was to actually find someone. I went looking for the others and got lost. Just constantly wandering a8out empty scenery, except for that creepy orange guy.

Orange guy?

Forg8 it, not talking a8out it. I guess I found the edge of it then, 8ecause I reached this wall, and outside the wall I saw...them.

The noble circle of horrorterrors.

I saw a calamari freakshow. I'm just glad 8eing dead makes you so num8 to lots of things. So they start talking to me, and I don't speak go88eldygook 8ut their putting pictures and ideas in my head anyway so I can get the gist of it. I do some things for them, they 8ring me 8ack to life in a new 8ody. I guess I missed the fine print on that one.

Vriska closed her eight, glowing eyes and shrugged her shoulders, but the weight of her pincer kept the shrug lopsided.

And what did they want you to do?

Stuff. The main thing was 8y the time I got here, something would stop them from 8eing a8le to talk more. I had to let some of their servants in that could act as messengers. Have to, I guess, now that I'm 8ctually here. No 8loody idea how, though.

Rose could feel the tingle that had been present since she entered the chamber spread, and it had been spreading from the moment she'd noticed it. The feeling of her wet clothes against the increasingly sensitive parts of her flesh was cool, and pleasing. She was forced to restrain herself from squirming in her black dress, and tried to keep her mind on the matter at hand.

I see, so my contact is useless, my mediator is unable to get here because of my contact's incompetence, all the consorts have already been evacuated so I've no alternatives, meaning I am forced once again to concede and throw my lot in with whatever not-effable-enough plot that pedophile creeper has implanted into his infernal device- A course of action three steps worse than just looking at the future, and being bound by it.

What? Wh8? You're 8laming ME for all th8s? It's you're stup8 p8trons that can't 8e assed to 8ctually sp8k wh8t I can fucking understand!

Ask, and be answered. Did you actually indicate you were confused, or did you just blindly nod along like a bumbling sidekick only concerned with receiving your end of the deal. Of all the dead to pick, why such a miserable agent as you?

D8n't you take the high ground with me, woe8itch. You're f8king up 8 times as much as I am here. If you're so gr8 at speaking the 8lackglu8s, and if the calamari corral are such wonderful m8sters, why are you still up acid cre8k without an 8-foot pole?

Vriska slowly moved in a circle around Rose, her armored feet tapping the ground in a steady rhythm of growing impatience.

At least I actually have a fall back plan, I just wish I didn't have to use it as anything more than a glorified encyclopedia

Even in the midst of an argument, Rose probed the demonocle for information. Information about her land, about Vriska, about how things can be summoned when cut off from the furthest ring. Anything that could help make a decision was desirable than going strictly by fate's walkthrough, because if you're going to defer on such a colossal degree you might as well not be conscious at all. Her restraint also had the added bonus of giving her some good ammunition.

You know about the cueball. You didn't care how or why it gave you answers, just that it did, and you relied on it at every step the moment your first instinct failed you, and the moment you lost that card everything around you fell apart because you'd gotten sloppy, let your brain rust with sloth. You stuck countless irons in the fire, but you'd forgotten what to do with them.

More information entered her brain, encoded in light and injected straight through the retina. More of the tale of Vriska's own cueball.

Did you ever stop to think, stop to really think why Mindfang gave up the infernal device?

Vriska stumbled to a skittering stop like she'd been slapped. For some random human to speak of her ancestor was blasphemy.

And what do you know a8out Mindfang?

Her voice was cold and calm, with only the slightest break. Her eight golden eyes smoldered with burning intensity.

She never forgave herself for asking how she died. Every detail you acquire about your inevitable future takes more and more of you out of the equation, and replaces it with a you-shaped role you're forced to assume. When Mindfang saw her future, she stopped being herself and started being the Mindfang described in the script laid out before her. Can you imagine such an existence? 'You are not acting like yourself today', can you imagine not having the ability to defy the 'you' that exists in the minds of others? Can you imagine being forced to spend every single day striving for a far off 'ideal' that you're not even sure you want, because you made the mistake of taking the choice out of your own hands? Never knowing for certain if the end result is truly what 'you' would have reached, even without the interference?

In Rose's right eye, she was fed a constant stream of the past, a montage of those who bore the sign of Scorpio on the planet Alternia. Only the past, only things that were certain. In her left eye she beheld the not quite infinite branches of fortune, the flowing of amplitudes to outcomes, and clumping into distributions of probability of like outcomes.

Right now there was a very large blob of amplitude that Vriska was about to hit her, and not as a mere show of aggression.

Rose had already moved out the way when the pincer struck the ground. Vriska screeched with fury.

You ch8ed! D8n't pr8tend you d8n't j8st pred8ct th8!

I did not force in any outcome, I merely observed what you were likely to do. At any point you could have chosen not to strike, to pause and think about just what lashing out would accomplish, but you didn't. You never do. You are worse than an animal because you choose to lower yourself to one. if you actually shut up and showed some self-awareness for more than eight seconds a year you'd realize just why it is everything goes wrong, and it's not because of karma, or justice, or luck, or any other consequence-appealing fallacy you want to name your surrender. You don't want to win, you want to already have won, so you latch onto anything that looks like an automatic victory, be it fixed dice rolls, following some brigand's memoirs to the letter, or just asking the future what you did to win then taking credit for the method produced ex nihilo.

8nd how 8s th8 8ny d8ffer8nt from wh8 you're doing?

Vriska scuttled back and forth in a half circle around Rose, her two colossal forelegs raised up and ready to stab down at any moment. The tingle in Rose had spread to fill her entire body.

Vriska was not still during this tirade, she circled Rose, step by intricate step on her long arachnid legs. The acidic fruit smell of her venom filled the chamber, and her whole body heaved with each breath she took, thrusting out her flat chest and prominent, gray nipples.

I am not careless. I am not indiscriminate. I am not perfect, but I do learn from my mistakes unlike you. I tread carefully down the path of knowledge and take care not to misstep the same way twice. I do not steal knowledge like it is so many immutable gems, I perceive it and evaluate its worth. You simply take. I see, I see what I am seeing, and I see how I am seeing. Most importantly, I don't need knowledge handed to me with explicit instructions in order to make use of it.

H8 you, Lalonde

You're despicable yourself, Serket. I believe that was my whole point.

The tentacles easily held Rose aloft, slowly rotating her to maintain eye contact with the spidertroll. Those not committed to supporting her frame stood poised in an array either side of her. Two gray, dainty legs dangled and swayed with each movement, unused and idle. Rose motionlessly captchalogued her demonocle.

H8 you. 8r8k you. H8 you. 8r8k you. H8 you 8r8k you h8 you 8r8k you h8 you 8r8k you h8you8r8kyouh8you8r8kyouh8you8r8kyoused8youm8you

What was that last part?

 

Rose thrust up her majyyiks like a barricade, barely in time to block the psychic equivalent of an anti-bunker missile. She could feel the jagged tails of domination ram and stab against her defenses, poking and slamming and scraping and beating against them again and again like a raining inferno. It took all her dark powers to keep the Scorpio out of her mind, fortunately that was not all she had at her disposal.

Vriska's eyes burned as she swung her pincer, and Rose could see her out fortune shifting. Rose dropped low to the ground, close enough that her lips almost brushed the stone. The hook-like appendage swung harmlessly overhead, but Rose glimpsed several blobs of probability flow together into an unlikely outcome. She pushed off the ground with all her tentacles, and flew through the air just as a large stone dislodged from the ceiling and fell where she had been. Rose struck the spidertroll as she landed, whiplike tentacles lashed against Vriska's chest and torso, painting large, blue welts across her gray skin. Vriska hissed and charged towards her. The probability amplitude flowed wildly before the frenzied thief, leaving the Seer's sight next to useless. With a bitter 'tsk', Rose diverted her focus away from what might as well have been background noise, and focused on the monstrous girl barrelling towards her.

Rose met Vriska's charge and grappled with her, tentacles wrapped around limbs and chest. She hardened their tips and dug in, drawing rivulets of blood from the Scorpio’s arms and stomach. Every muscle in her torso bulged with effort against her restraints.

H8 H8 H8 H8 H8 H8 H8 H8

Vriskra grunted in mantra as she struggled against the broodfestering Seer. With a terrible screech, her great pincer broke free and lashed out. The hooked tip barely reached Rose. It scraped from her collar down to her navel, cut open her dress and left a jagged, shallow cut running between her breasts and down her belly. It burned against the salty sea air, and Rose noticed with detached curiosity that she was bleeding black. 

Vriska leaned down close and hissed in Rose's face, so close if she bothered to breathe Rose would surely inhale vapor from her venom.

Rose pushed herself up and bit the spidertroll on her lower lip. She bit down hard until she tasted blood, and dragged her nails down the girl's flat chest with as much force as she could muster. She expected Vriska to howl and pull back.

She did not expect Vriska to push forward, and mash her mouth against hers. A long, almost proboscis-like tongue thrust into her mouth, tasting her insides with erratic, feathery twitches. The spidertroll reached with her remaining hand and pulled against Rose's hair, tilting her head back to better invade her mouth. Rose lashed furiously against the girl's back with her tentacles, and abruptly became an expert on the feeling of having something hiss right down your throat.

She probably should have expected the large fangs either side of Vriska's mouth to clamp down like they did. They plunged into either side of her neck, right behind her jaw, and by the time she realized what had happened the venom was already pumping into her.

Rose tried to will her heart to slow. If she didn't need air, then surely she didn't need blood, but the moment the thick blue liquid entered her body the tingle she had felt since entering exploded into a fire of hunger and greed.

Rose reached up with two trembling hands. Her body was already losing strength. She dragged her nails against Vriska's cheek and wrapped her hands around her neck, squeezing with all the rabidly failing might she could muster. Her countless tentacles whipped around, and latched themselves around Vriska. Two grabbed tightly the troll's mismatched horns, slightly rough like the hard bark of a tree. Three ran through Vriska's hair, stroking her ears and scalp with their pen-like tips. Five assailed Vriska's back, scratching feebly against her shoulders, her sides and her spine. Four clutched at Vriska's chest, stroking and prodding at her prominent nipples. The rest clung to wherever they could, her waist, her thorax, her legs or her arms. Rose clung to Vriska with desperate need. Her face looked bruised, and dripped with inky sweat. She hungrily returned Vriska's ongoing kiss. She'd still enough strength to move her mouth, but not enough to raise her head, so when the tusk-like fangs pulled out from her neck, the wound dripping black and blue, the only thing holding their faces together was Vriska's hand behind her head. She wanted to buck her hips, to rub her chest against anything, but the most she could muster was a slight twitching of her spine. She could still feel, though. Her sensations were in no way diminished by her paralysis. She could feel the painful arousal between her legs, physically painful. Her clit felt harder than she had ever known in her life and she could feel her body's juices tickling her thighs as they trickled out.

She was desperately horny, almost completely immobile, and the only other living thing on the planet that could give her the release she craved was the monstrous spider woman that had been trying to kill her moments before, but now gazed upon her like a precious trophy having done this to her.

Rose had never known a more exquisite hate in her life.

 

There was a sound, a wet, scraping sound that came from the direction of Vriska's bloated abdomen. Rose strained against her immobility to try and see the source of the noise, and was able to catch only fleeting glimpses as it swished side to side.

A long, segmented appendage curled out from Vriska's abdomen. Did it grow from nothing? Had it been tucked away somewhere? Rose hadn't bothered to examine every last inch of Vriska, an elementary mistake.

At a glance it could be described as a scorpioid tail with no stinger. Eight chitinous segments that narrowed in succession, shiny and black and dripping with blue fluid. The tip segment was about the size of a ping-pong ball, the next was the size of a fist, and the whole thing was a bit longer than an adult human's leg.

Rose had only just begun to comprehend the appendage in her venom-addled mind when Vriska curled her abdomen inwards and roughly prodded the organ between her legs.

Rose let out a thick, gurgled scream as Vriska tip rubbed against her enflamed pussy, her lips thick with blood and her clit sticking straight out and prominent from her wet, black folds. The troll girl grunted and pushed harder, heedless of anything but her choking need for release. She rubbed desperately against Rose like a dog humping, and not without result. All the poking and prodding against her needy pussy and clit shoved Rose into a crude orgasm, short and tantalizing and not enough, nowhere near enough, The toxic flame in the seer's body hardly wavered  
with just one meager release. With a distorted cry of frustration, Rose flung two tentacles against the venom and grabbed Vriska's appendage. They trembled with strain against the paralyzing effects, and lined Vriska's organ against Rose's swollen, needy entrance.

8H 8H 88888888H

With a few seconds of constant pushing, the first segment forced its way into Rose's tight confines. Vriska didn't let up for one second, and immediately began thrusting again, pounding at Rose's entrance with the second, fist sized segment of her long organ. There was little room to move inside Rose, and the force of each thrust went through her whole body. Her limp legs shook with every movement, she squeezed with the bouquet of tentacles wrapped around Vriska's torso as much as the venom would allow her, and clenched her hands on Vriska's neck as tight as she could muster, digging her nails in slightly to the soft, gray flesh in just the right spot that it made Vriska moan, long and loud. Rose could smell the citric tang of the spidertroll’s breath. Vriska pushed harder, and the second segment forced its way in, wet and loud.

I'A NRUB'YIGLITH PHANG'SCRYT GNII V' ESQ'GISTRRN VLITHE DRO A STEM YONDB'YD!

Rose cried out as she came, black smoke billowed from her mouth like ink it water. Her whole body shook violently, and a splash of jet fluid ran down the bulbous organ penetrating her. Vriska didn't stop thrusting once she was in, Driving into the Lalonde girl again and again. The barrage of stimulation in her puffy, sensitized cunt groped and melted all the thought from Rose's head. She curled her toes and arced her back and on some reflexive level realized the venom's paralysis was weakening, or her body was adapting to it. She tightened her tentacles' hold against Vriska and pulled them closer together, her pert, upturned tits mashed into Vriska's flat, toned chest and sent a jolt into the growing mass of pleasure that threatened to consume her. With her many limbs, Rose rubbed their bodies together, up and down in rhythm with the spidertroll's thrusts, and Vriska was already too far gone to realize her victim was not as helpless as she should have been.

As the Venom wore off, Rose's tentacles became more active. As she clung to Vriska, and slid her body against the troll's, Rose smothered Vriska body with touches. She squeezed and twisted her dark, protruding nipples, she pressed hard against tense muscles and softly against sensitive nerves, she stroked her cheek and tugged her hair, she brushed her lip and squeezed her arms and felt her ribs press against her skin. Rose cried out in black speech as Vriska fucked her right through another orgasm, and even more tentacles spilled from the dead seer's back. They stroked and petted and writhed all over Vriska torso and head, anywhere and everywhere not covered by insensitive chitin.

Vriska snarled and moaned like a tormented animal, her grunts of pleasure stained by the pain of her need. Her burnings eyes twisted in an expression of exquisite agony.

 

A cluster of Rose's tentacles slithered down between her legs. her hips were already numb from abuse so she manually spread her thighs and anchored her ankles to the thick, long organ penetrating her. She coiled two tentacles and squeezed against its thinner, less insensitive shell, hard enough that soft flesh inside could feel it. Vriska spasmed at the sudden feeling of it, and almost collapsed on her eight long, arachnid legs. Rose continued to squeeze and release in a steady rhythm, and at the same time carefully positioned another tentacle between her own soft, grey cheeks. She dipped the tentacle's in the black fluid spilling from her vagina, lined its tip against her puckered anus, and jammed three foot of it inside her in a single motion.

Rose chirped and clicked something in slurred broodfester tongues as she came again. She wanted desperately to kiss something but her instincts shied away from Vriska's fangs, so she buried her mouth in Vriska's nape and sucked against the spidertroll's skin. A cornucopia of smells filled the chambers, of sweat and blood and venom and sex- overpoweringly of sex- and formed a thick musk that clung to their bodies and drove Rose wild. Her body felt like steam, scalding and buffeted as it rose to new heights of pleasure. Vriska pounded her bruised pussy while she worked her own ass with a tentacle and all her other tentacles gripped and rubbed and teased Vriska and she could feel everything through them, and all she could smell was Vriska, and all she could hear was her own blasphemous moans, Vriska's grunts, and the wet, lewd sounds where their bodies joined.

Vriska let out a bloodcurdling, agonized screech, gave a colossal thrust, and everything below Rose's chest exploded in her mind into rainbows and plunder and great, coiling things that exist out of time and space and light and blood and a mixing of pleasure and pain unique in all paradox.

The brilliance subsided, and Rose became aware of a pressure and a wetness deep inside of her. Unreasonably deep. Vriska let out halted whimpers above her, and she could feel Vriska's organ throb with each whimper. The wet pressure inside her was building, it felt good in its own weird way. Rose felt about her battered cunt with a tentacle, and gasped at what she felt. Vriska had gotten the third segment inside of her. She ran her tentacle over her pelvis, and could feel the distinct bulge of the organ distending her skin. Vriska howled, and the pressure grew greater still. Rose moaned at the feeling, and rubbed her stomach with a tentacle. Her stomach bulged out greatly, as though she were perhaps four months pregnant.

That thought struck Rose, and several things fell into place in her mind. Rose peered inside her body with her powers, just in time to see the throbbing tip of Vriska's ovipositor deliver another eight ball sized sack of eggs directly into her womb. The shocking perverseness of it all, and another contribution to the pressure inside her cut her vision short with a sudden orgasm. She clenched her eyes shut and swore against her gods as she bucked her hips against the mammoth organ so deep inside of her. Rose hugged Vriska tightly with her arms and tentacles, but discovered one of her appendages was still lodged deep in her ass, squirming around inside her. Vriska gasped, and Rose felt her lay another egg sac inside of her, along with a spurt of blue ejaculate. Rose came again, and everything went dark.

 

When Rose awoke, she had been placed in a shallow pool of water by the side of the cavern. The first sight that greeted her eyes was her own swollen belly, eclipsing her vision. Vriska watched her with a tormented look, unsure if she should feel smug or ashamed, but clearly not at all concerned for Rose's wellbeing. Depending on what the Seer said, she had no doubt the thief would get up and leave without her.  
Rose closed her eyes and stroked her belly with her hand, it felt nice to touch it. After a time, the bloodread beastspawn eggs inside her would be incubated, and ready to be laid. Soon after, they would hatch, and what emerged would be born already knowing the full details of her dark patron's plans, and completely loyal to their broodmother.

Her tentacles had evidently withdrawn at some point in her unconsciousness, but Rose could still feel them below the surface. The corpse she inhabited had been changed into a perfect tool for her, another gift from those that aided her.

She could hear Vriska pace impatiently, each tap tapping, rapping at the chamber floor. Somehow, the knowledge of the fallen godthief's agitation was comforting to the Seer. She enjoyed seeing the Scorpio displeased.

There was much work to do, the scratch had been achieved but the new world was no paradise. Preparations had to be made.

That, however, was something they had three years to accomplish. Rose listened contently as her mammoth belly gurgled, and knew that the Epoch of Joy had come to an end.

**Author's Note:**

> I am completely in love with the idea of Rose's corpse on the battlefield just getting up and becoming its own entity.


End file.
